Category Archives: My Life

Family Trees: a colorful clan – InDesign Template

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Apex panaramic clan family treeversion of the colorful clan for Apex (the first puppy we raised for GDB)

A couple of weeks ago I did a post on colorful clan family tree for a 4″ x 12″ panoramic frame. I’ve put together a simple Adobe InDesign template to recreate the one from Parents.com. As I was working on it I realized that I didn’t need to have different colors of paper. With a color printer I could just print my background color.

For a sample I decided to show Apex’s (the first puppy we raised for Guide Dogs for the Blind) family tree. As you can see I don’t have all the birth dates and I don’t have any death date though some of these dogs have certainly passed away. But I though it would work to show what the template is like. Of course when you open the template up in InDesign you will be able to customize anything you would like from the fonts to the background colors.

You can download the Panoramic Clan Template here from Dropbox. When you open it up in Dropbox it will look like crazy gobbledegook. But once you save it to you computer and open it in InDesign it will work fine. I made this template in InDesign CS6. Let me know if you have problems or suggestions. I’m hoping to make more templates this coming year.

Trust

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trust 1Inspired by my friend Shannon Christensen, I decided to pick a word as a kind of theme/resolution for 2015. After some contemplation I decided on trust. Trust in the Lord. Trust in his guidance. Trust in my ability to understand that guidance. Trust that I’m on the right path. Trust in my skills. Trust that if I follow my plan, I’ll get the things that are important done. Trust in reaching out to others and building relationships. Trust in the future, etc. etc.

I’ve never tried picking a single word for the year but I like it. I’m looking for a song to go with my word. If you have suggestions let me know. Do you do goals or resolutions?

Pupdate: Emma

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Emma

It has been almost two months since we got the dreaded phone call that Emma would not be a guide dog. The official cause: luxating lumbar. Which means that her lower back isn’t stable and it moves in ways that it shouldn’t. This is our first career change for medical reason. It is sad because Emma would have mad a wonderful guide dog. She was born with this condition and in hind sight there were signs of it. She was terrible at tug. Sometimes when you pulled her on your lap (while sitting on the floor of course) she would let out a little yelp. She was always very slow to sit when given the command.

There is no way to know just how her future will progress. Hopefully her condition can be managed with pain meds and lifestyle choices. But she might need surgery. This makes her placement in a new home by Guide Dogs for the Blind more challenging. Not everyone is up to taking on a known medical challenge like this. Emma’s mom’s family met Emma when they brought Mauve to campus and seriously considered adopting her. But after talking with the vet at GDB they realized that their lifestyle is too active for Emma.  We get a monthly update on her, which is really awesome. Here are the two we have gotten so far:

Emma #52J1 is “spunky, smart, and a lot like her mom”, per one of the Training Department staff who happened to be filling in in the whelping kennel when Emma and her littermates were born, and who is now working in the kennel where Emma is living. An dog adoption applicant  family is considering adopting Emma, pending some thought about her orthopedic issues.
Emma #52J1 is “willing and very nice” per an employee who has been caring for her. Emma is building a rapport with a staff member who has recently been assigned to Emma as an appropriate permanent adoptive home is being sought for her.

Personal update

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Disaster struck this morning as I was taking Fable out for her first relieving. I tripped and my right hand bent in ways it wasn’t meant to and the result was a broken bone. So I’m giving myself permission to miss a few posts to my blog as I figure out how to function with one hand. Hope everyone has a great Halloween!

Candy Window: Ferris wheel update

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Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

Late Saturday night Bill came in from the garage and said “you need to come see this.” I was pleasantly surprised with what I saw. He had the spokes of the Ferris wheel on the stand plus the cars attached and they were spinning around. Not with the motor yet but with a little push the wheel turned smoothly around. It was so exciting to see that much of it come together! To see for the first time the basic structure of what we are trying to put together! I took a video but I’ll have to upload it later and share it here. [I’ve uploaded it. Just click on the image above and it will take you to the video!]

Also on Saturday, I finished all the faces of the figures. I forgot to take photos and didn’t realize it until just now. I’ll have to do that tomorrow and add them too. Then I looked at how many weeks are left until we need to install the window, just 5 weeks, and figured out how many things I need to get done each week to be ready. I’ve committed to the South Jordan Youth Council to work on the window every afternoon so hopefully more of them can come and help. From my calculations if I get one object done each day I’ll be ready. That will be tough without help from the Youth Council. My goal for today was to finish Olaf. I had a crazy morning but I worked hard on Olaf this afternoon and evening but didn’t get him finished, but I came really close.

It will be revealing how much gets accomplished this week. I’ll let you know next Monday if I’m confident, hopefully or in a panic about the next few weeks.

Pupdate: Fable & Inktober

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Fable will be 16 weeks old on Monday. This is a milestone in a puppy in trainings life. She gets the last round of her regular vaccinations which lifts some restrictions on where she can go, place like parks and other high traffic dog areas like the pet store. Recently they added an extra parvo vaccination as an extra precaution against the virus. For puppy raisers 16 weeks is like the threshold of the puppy from preschool to grade school.

Fable had an unexpected trip to the vet this last Monday. About a week before I wondered if she might have an ear infection. Bill cleaned her ears and they were pretty dirty. Then when he checked the next night one of them was really dirty again. He cleaned it every day and sometime twice a day but it wasn’t improving. So I took her in to get it checked out. Turned out she has a lot of yeast in her ear so the vet put some thick medicine in and he will check it to make sure it is all better on Monday.

Here are my drawings for Inktober for the past week. Just one week to go. I’m super happy that I’ve been able to do a drawing everyday so far. I plan to keep it for one more week.

Candy Window: fondant faces update

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I finally figured out how to do the faces for the figures. Yeah! The first one I did was the Nutcracker and I didn’t like how he turned out but wasn’t sure what to do about it. He just looked old and not very happy. Bill suggested that the fondant was to bumpy. I was pretty sure this from the texture of the Styrofoam base.

Nutcracker

So taking that into account I tried again with man. I put some extra fondant down for his cheeks, forehead, chin and nose. This was to give the flat form of the Styrofoam more of the shape of a face. Then I rolled out a really thin sheet of the fondant (it is actually half fondant and half gum paste) and laid that over the whole face area. I smoothed that out and did a little adjustment to the shaping. Next step was to roll out a thicker layer of skin colored fondant and put that down over the other two layers.So far so good, I was feeling hopeful at this point.

man

After smoothing that out, I added his ears, a nose, cut in a mouth and poked holes through the fondant for his eyes. I widened the eye holes out a bit and put in two small balls of white fondant and patted that down into an eye shape. Next came two small green balls of fondant for his iris that I smooshed flat and finally two tiny black balls for the pupils, also smooshed flat. I like how he came out! I also got the woman done. There is hope after all! When I get the rest of the faces done, I will probably go back and do the Nutcracker over. But I’ll wait in case time gets critical and I can’t get it done.

woman

We had five kids from the Youth Council come on Saturday. The cars for the Ferris wheel are almost all covered on the outside with licorice. Bill got the pillow blocks for the Ferris wheel axle. The batteries for his drill died so he went to get some new ones and ended up with a new drill. Same price as buying two batters plus it included a charger. Then he got called back into work so he only made a little progress. Bill is thinking about taking a couple of days off this week so he can get some more time in on the Ferris wheel.

Pupdate: Emma & Fable

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Just got word today that Emma won’t be assigned to a training string until November 3rd. If I understand right, the reports for Thursday’s phase reports are turned in the Friday before. If that is the case then we won’t see Emma’s name on the phase report until November 13th, two months after we put her on the puppy truck for San Rafael. I really appreciate our CFR (community field representative) for the heads up on this. I had noticed that it was taking what seemed like a long time for former breeder eval dogs to show up on the phase report, but this is a really, really long time. I was hoping she would show up yesterday.

Fable is growing fast and learning everyday. Some days are a struggle but she is improving. I can’t wait until she can walking nicely with her head collar on. Right now socializing takes ever ounce of attention and patience I have. I’ve continued doing #Inktober drawings of Fable. Here are the last weeks efforts.

Candy Window: update

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Grinch and Max ready for candy

The figures are ready for their faces. I’m trying a fondant/gum paste mixture this year instead of straight fondant. The gum paste is supposed to give the fondant more stretch. This is a key part of the window. If the faces look good the window should be a success. If the faces turn out bad it is hard to make up for it else where. I’ve not done faces on this scale before. I’ve done bigger and I’ve done smaller. Feeling a bit intimidated about getting started but just need to dive in and get going. After I get the first one done, I should feel better about things.

two kids ready for candy

Bill ended up working all night Friday and all day Saturday so no progress on the Ferris wheel structure. But I sorted through the candy that the Youth Council kids picked out for the figures and made a few adjustments because of scale or color issues. I hope they don’t mind too much. I also order some more candy. I need to pick up some chocolate and yellow licorice for hair and then we should be in pretty good shape to move forward with all the candy.

man and woman ready for candy

Pupdate: Fable & Inktober

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Fable is learning fast and growing faster. She lives life with everything she has. Giving her all to play or sleeping. Since she got her official “puppy in training” jacket on Monday she has been to the Corn Maze, a Relief Society activity, the grocery store and Bill’s work. The employees at the grocery store flocked to see our new puppy. Fable loved it.

For some projects I’d like to do, I’m working on developing my drawing skills. Nothing serious, just simple cartoonish dog drawings. So I joined a challenge called #Inktober. The idea is do an ink drawing everyday in October. I’ve done nine drawings of Fable so far and posted them on Facebook each day. The drawing above is one of the and here are the rest: